• Clause 231 (war guilt clause) could be argued to be an appropriate response to the cost and damage caused by German troops during the war.

  • reparations needed to alleviate the destruction caused to France and Belgium’s infrastructure and economy; around 1.5 million French soldiers died, while another 4.2 million were wounded (1.5 million of these were permanently disabled), crippling the workforce.
  • Scorched-earth policies during invasion and retreat of these nations meant salted fields, destroyed factories and flooded mines, meaning that French industry would take a long time to recover (partially why France surrendered quickly in the rematch - they simply did not have the necessary men or resources).
  • As I've already mentioned, Germany had not been obligated to come to the assistance of Austria-Hungary at all. Article 3 of the Triple Alliance agreement stated that the Triple Alliance would only come into existence if one of the partners was the victim of a major attack by two major powers. This was clearly not the case in 1914; Germany’s belligerent government had leapt to the assistance of Austria-Hungary, and had launched the full domino effect of the alliances.
  • Germany had also aggressively encouraged Austria-Hungary not to compromise on her ultimatum to Serbia, who had agreed to 8 out of 10 points, presumably to encourage a conflict. This pressed Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia.

• The German cabinet in Berlin and the delegation in Paris were not permitted to negotiate the terms of the treaty for good reason; they had not accepted that the war was lost, and therefore could not be reliably allowed to negotiate the terms of a peace treaty.

  • Although Germany accepted that they had broken international law by invading Belgium, they also blamed Russia for the war and did not want to pay for the destruction on the Eastern Front.
    
    • As such, they asked for their reparations payments to be only 100 bn goldmarks (approximately £4.8 bn) - over 25% decrease of the agreed £6.6bn.
    • This counter-proposal was supposedly meant to be in line with the 14 Points; however, the government had neglected to remember that Germany had rejected the 14 Points when they were first offered them in March 1918. Whether the message was spread by naïve ignorance or wilful misunderstanding, there was certainly no promise that the peace treaty would be written according to a rejected plan.

• The financial sections of the treaty are often the most maligned; they do demand £6.6bn from an ailing, defeated nation after all.

  • However, article 232 implicitly accepts Germany’s financial incapacity to pay the enormous sum, and guaranteed that the amount to be paid would be within the limits of the economy.
  • The amount would be estimated by a reparation commission (the Inter-Allied Reparation Commission). This commission would reconsider the extent of Germany’s obligation to pay the fines on 1 May 1921, after a primary payment of 20 billion goldmarks (approximately £1bn).
  • The reparations were not necessarily limited to cash payment; coal, locomotives and shipping all counted as reparations credits, as did the return of Alsace-Lorraine and confiscated military equipment. Germany was also told to surrender many of her large ships and navy to compensate for the damage caused by submarines during the war.
  • None of these requirements exceeded Germany’s coffers, and neither directly nor indirectly crippled the post war economy. Therefore, it is easy to argue that this part of the Treaty was fair and just.
  • Net French losses in WW1 amounted to £19,144,794,238.98, but they only asked for £6,600,000,000 to repair. Needless to say, Germany never paid up (mainly because of the Great Depression).

Overall, I believe that the Treaty of Versailles was an appropriate response to the damage caused by Germany during the Great War, and any damage to her people or financial sector is directly due to incompetence in the biased politics and frsnkly idiotic economic policies of the newly formed Weimar Republic and their desires to blame third parties for the economic issues caused by their own ineptitude.